KEY OF HEAVEN

Here amongst Milton's
Lycidas...a cowslip's

skeleton
pressed between its pages

blossomed back in 1922
its ghost haunting the book

its head bent over the line
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

staining the word "Fame"
with its own lost shadow

the unknown woman in
the photographs laughs

at my discovering her
dressed in black and white in black and white

hands stuck in pockets
defiantly staring back at me

she more real
than me

the only other photo
she has removed her hands

from her pockets
producing them like a magic trick

they lay on her lap
like limpid rabbits

curiously alive
somehow

a sheen of sunlight
catches her Marcel wave

Petrella
the photograph names her

in writing as elegant
as she

early spring
1922.

*

Key of Heaven is only one of the names for the common cowslip( Primula Veris ). It travels under other names such as cuy lippe, herb peter, paigle, peggle, key flower, fairy cups, petty mulleins, crewel, buckles, palsywort, plumrocks and tittypines.

There was also a recipe for a delicious sparkling cowslip wine. Alas the book was too expensive for my means and I was more interested in the cowslip dying between Milton's lines and the woman who was Petrella back in the days of the year 19 and 22!

I no longer remember how to make cowslip wine and I never did.

TURN OF THE CENTURY
(for Debbie unable to sleep)

Bright yellow flower
dazed...standing in a vase

tries to remember

a blueness of sky...lost now
beyond the great window pane.

Tries to remember
a joy of sweet falling rain

lost now on the glass

& yet...the memory of it
persists...pursues it...& yet

tries to remember
the pleasure in being a seed

roots reaching into
a sheer richness of darkness

& its opening into sun

tries...remembers the
playfulness of butterflies

clouds chasing a cloud
winds scattering tiny stars

across the beauty of a night

tries &...remembers
the wonder of a bird’s song

the sun forever
almost just...just...out of reach

the sudden silence
after the storm is gone and...and

flower bows its head.

The new young maid is scolded
for not changing the vase.

MORNING'S MINION

The kestrel
threw its shadow

on the path
that ran away from me

vanishing into the sun
before it could enter my eyes.

I saw and did not see it.

I had only ever seen it
in words

the poet's lines
hovering in my mind

until here upon my arm
in a football ground

deigning to allow us
in its presence

gazing into
and beyond

my tiny humanity.

"...FOR GREED ALL NATURE IS TOO LITTLE..."

first the city
ate an adjacent town then

put out a suburb
like a great paw

belched
a factory

devoured a well known
beauty spot

that was soon
forgotten as such

ate a field and
ate another field

the city's hunger
fed by greed

sent out pylons
striding across countryside

like giant
alien beings

vomiting asphalt
so that green was as if

it had
never been

its scenic magnificence
now only available

in an out of print
1930's guide book

even its memory
dying now with old Joe Hart

who managed to make it
past the hundred mark

the town he was born in
no longer to be seen

except in sepia
or Kodachrome

a picture postcard
(3 for 2)

in the bright new
museum.

*

The title is supplied by one Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) that well known and renowned Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist.

DU TEMPS PERDU

weather vane
rusted into a NNW
still facing into the long ago

paying little heed
to time or what
way the wind blows

the peal of a bell
nails our shadows
to the hard ground

the sharpness of sunshine
outlining everything
it touches

the smack of bat on ball
****** of tea things
broken china cup "...howzat!"

our shadows get up
walk silently away
they have business elsewhere

so here we are
trapped in this
one moment

staring blindly
into a future
we can not know

the white border
of the photograph
contains us

it is no longer
the 1930's
storm clouds gather

another generation holds us
between forefinger and thumb
war has come and gone

they must wonder what
we were
thinking when it was taken

we stare out at them
staring in at us
each unable to imagine the other

they remark that we
have their eyes...their faces
the resemblance there for all to see

they could just as easily
be us
"Ha ha...that's us...in fancy dress."

time doesn't seem
to have a moved
the weathervane still

doesn't know
which way
to turn

THE PATHWAY OF HER SONG

Granny's garden
she's in there somewhere
only her song visible

camouflaged by
her ripening gooseberries
Granny sings to the summer

I follow
the path of her
song

pillowcases & tea towels
drying on bushes & branches
Granny and the birds sing

I step on each note
a pathway
through the air

Granny's garden overgrown
with Time
her song still rests upon the air

Granny's garden
she's in there somewhere
hidden by Death

I step upon each note
still following
the pathway of her song

SANTA CLAUS & GOD HAVE GOT TO GO!

The ****** Mary
slapped Santa Claus.

...hard!

Santa Claus
blushed scarlet

and spilt his sweet sherry
over one of the two angels.

One of them
was no angel.

The pretty one
with blue tips to her wings.

The Devil laughed
lewdly.

God made a grab
at the stripper who

squealed

losing a veil or two
in the process

as God tried to
make her.

Only creating
much hocus pocus.

I could see
(Me? I was Jesus Christ)

that this
fancy dress

was about to get

seriously
out of hand.